GI Joe: Retaliation

When I was three years old, I lost Beachhead.  He wore a military sweater complete with the shoulder patch for gun recoil.  He also wore a badass balaclava, and he was an Army Ranger.  Did I mention he was 3 1/2 inches tall?  In case you haven't guessed, Beachhead was an action figure.  He was my favorite GI Joe.  And I lost him.

Since that sad day in 1986, my brother has always mailed me the new editions of Beachhead.  Two Christmases ago, he even game me a special edition, 12-inch collectible Beachhead.  It wasn't cheap.  He has this crossbow with individual arrows, and then there are these smoke bombs...Sorry.

I suppose this has been my brother's attempt to help my recapture my childhood.  I suppose I started to lose some of my bright-eyed innocence when Beachhead left my toy bag.  Life was simple back then.  Bad guys wore cobra symbols on their shoulders and good guys had blond flattop haircuts.  To me, GI Joe means a time when I didn't need meds to calm my nerves, and girls were a far-off problem.  I swear I could have saved a lot of time if a few of my ex-girlfriends would have dressed less like hipsters and more like Storm Shadow or Cobra Commander.

So, going to the theatre for GI Joe Retaliation, I walked in with the heavy weight of nostalgia on my shoulders.  The movie did not disappoint.  I put it alongside other toy adaptations like Masters of the Universe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  None of these films are particularly good ,but they all bring to life the toys that filled the playrooms of my childhood.  Plus, it is always nice to see Dolph Lundgren speaking monosyllabically and flirting with a pre-plastic surgery Courtney Cox.  Watching GI Joe, I was thrilled to see the HISS Tanks, the Fangboat, and Roadblock's Tank.  Unlike so many stock Hollywood filmmakers, the production team actually built full-size working models of these vehicles. The vehicles I used to push across our shag carpet are now being driven across the screen of multiplexes everywhere.

When these toys first graced store shelves, the cartoons were meant only to sell a product.  The stories did not matter much and they served only to show the good guys battling the bad guys.  Cobra builds the MASS device.  I can destroy the world.  The GI Joes stop them.  Zartan starts making trouble in the swamp.  The GI Joes stop them.  Notice a pattern here?  It didn't matter; I still marched the aisles of Toys R Us, searching for Night Viper and Stalker with his collectible kayak.  Sweet.  If I never judged the GI Joe cartoon for peddling the toys, is it fair to hold the film to a higher standard?  Isn't it enough that I can see the plastic heroes of my youth clashing in 3D on the big screen?

I think so.  The film has its weaknesses for sure.  The characterization is clunky.  Lady Jaye (Adrianne Palick) became a soldier only to prove to her father that women can serve well in the military.  Of course she is proven right.  I am more impressed by Ms. Palicki here.  Since her days on Supernatural and Friday Night Lights, I have never understood her allure.  I guess all it takes is a revealing red dress to, uh, reveal her best assets.  Add in some impossibly short shorts and what appear to be 700 minute abs, and I am sold.  

While Palicki proved her worth to me, the RZA cannot claim the same.  What is he doing her?  What is he doing anywhere?  He makes a few appearances as a blind ninja master.  True, the guy has had a very nice year.  First, he directs his first film, the god-awful The Man With the Iron Fists.  Now, here he is, looking absolutely ridiculous.  I know that he is the self-proclaimed expert on Kung Fu films, but that doesn't grant him the right to make or star in these films.  He makes Gerard Butler look like Laurence Olivier.  Seriously.

Director John Chu's gifts do not lie in characterization or directing actors.  He really shines in the action scenes.  As the GI Joes and Cobra agents punch, shoot, and slice each other, you can see Chu's background in dance movies come through.  Chu cut his teeth on such dance fare as Step Up 3D and Justin Bieber: Never Say Never.  The set pieces are choreographed like beautifully gritty dances, and they pack quite a punch.  A gun/hand-to-hand battle between Roadblock (Dwayne Johnson) and Firefly (Ray Stevenson) displays the grace and hard-hitting edge of a John Woo shootout.  He directs a nifty scene featuring ninjas running across rock faces and sliding down zip lines with great aplomb.  The stuntmen and women fly and jump from rope to rope almost as if they are moving to music.  It's all thrilling, if just a little insane.

Since I spent last week skewering Olympus Has Fallen, I may appear to be a hypocrite.  Isn't GI Joe just as gung-ho and war-mongering as Butler's slice of Fox News action?  The film is absolved of many of its militaristic sins because it exists in a fantasy world.  Just as I miss those days of simplicity with my GI Joes, perhaps we all miss a time when the line between good guy and bad guy was clearly demarcated.  That time probably never existed, but it is refreshing to see a film where the North Koreans, Middle Eastern countries, and the US can all consider Cobra a mutual enemy.  Religion and history are taken out of the equation, and we see that Cobra is just pure evil and guys with impossibly huge biceps are there to stop them.  It may be stupid, but it takes me back to those great halls of my childhood imagination.  I didn't feel guilty for enjoying myself, and you shouldn't either.